25 Days of Weird Christmas: Zombies, Burning Goats and Potheads

It’s almost over. Soon, we’ll all be able to tear down the tinsel, turn off the Bing Crosby, spit out the ‘nog and get on with our lives. But before we lose our festive feelings, here’s a few Christmas Eve goodies, sure to make you feel angry, frightened and offer a little bit of a contact high.

Burn the goat!

cbc.ca

Yule Goat before its fiery demise.

Every year in the Swedish city of Gavle, Christmas-loving Swedes celebrate with the building of gigantic, straw Yule Goat. Conversely, Christmas-hating Swedes celebrate by razing that same highly combustible icon to the ground. Since its first incarnation in 1966, the Gavle Goat, an ancient Swedish Yuletide icon, has been burned, amputated or shredded to smithereens 24 times by surly locals and displaced Burning Man fans. Read more here, or if you prefer: the incinerated Goat’s depressing blog!

Raise the dead!

westfieldcomicsetc.com

No wonder Santa is so fat– he’s so full of BRAINS.

These days, the zombies don’t need another commentator expounding on the special place they hold in our cultural imagination. Of late, the brain eating, recently deceased have starred in films and evenshuffled into the inner workings of plucky Elizabeth Bennet’s young heart. So why should Santa Claus get in the way? To get your zombie holiday fix, you can listen to Zombie Christmas, an album of classic Christmas songs with an undead twist. Sample lyric: “We wish you a Zombie Christmas, We wish you a Zombie Christmas, We wish you a Zombie Christmas, because you won’t see next year!” Or, if all this mash-up nonsense is too high brow for you, Pirate Cat Radio Cafe is celebrating Christmas right–with a zombie film fest. The necromantic lineup includes George Romeros’ Night of the Living Dead and Jaques Tourneur’s I Walked with a Zombie. The damned will be hungering for human flesh from noon to 10pm, Friday, December 25 at Pirate Cat Radio Cafe, 2781 21st Street, SF.

Oh man, man. The holidays are stressful time, man. Luckily, there’s Cheech and Chong. The great grandfathers of stoner comedy reinvigorate the traditional Santa mythology as only they know how. If you don’t feel more relaxed after listening to this 1971 recording of Santa and his old lady, you need to go up north and get your head together, man.